Trevor turns 12!!!

Yup, we are in the midst of the chaos of moving but one VERY special boy turned 12 years old today so I just had to get a quick blog up to celebrate our favorite middle child. He had a birthday outing with his best friend last weekend to celebrate early and then today he got to go to his last day of school, pick his favorite restaurant for dinner and then have fantastic rainbow cake in our hotel room. We love you, Buddy!! Hope you had a wonderful day!!!

This was a very important picture for me. Each and every birthday we hang this (now) old paper HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign and snap a picture. I saved it weeks ago (when we found out we'd be moving during Trevor's birthday) from the abyss of packing and being lost in a box and hung it in our trailer. So yes ma'am, that's a silly paper sign hanging in the crazy redone trailer we are going to camp our way across the country on the way to our new home...with our WONDERFUL 12 year old sitting underneath it!!

Happy Mother's Day!!

Just wanted to share one of my Mother's Day gifts.  Several special people worked together to create this for me and I *LOVE IT*!!!  It showcases my three beautiful monkeys that I'm so proud of, and it makes me feel pretty darn special that a lot of hard work went into it!  I also have to point out, that the calligraphy was done by Emilee.  At first I just read "Kids" and I thought it looked professionally printed, but then I read the whole thing and Emilee explained that she freehanded it.  (I omitted the top box with our last name, but you'll have to imagine it written in beautiful scrawl.) WOW!  Nice job, girlie!!  I can't wait to get it hung in a place of honor in our new home in Texas next month. 

Even though Joshua had to take off early for work this morning and we missed him, the monkeys and I had a nice day today (and don't worry, Joshua took me out for a very yummy dinner with friends last night).  We went for a bit of retail therapy (read...I had a 30% off from Kohl's burning a hole in my pocket lol and everyone is in need of summer stuff) and then we went to the pool for the afternoon.  Emilee and I sat on the side of the pool and had a very nice chat for a bit as we watched the boys play in the water.  The boys called out lots of "Mom, watch!!" as they did their tricks and jumps and splashes in the pool and it hit me how special that is.  They won't call out to me to watch their every trick for long and it was just an awesome moment to soak in...my very grown up daughter hanging out with me and my two boys happily playing and still thinking I was the most important person they want to see their tricks.  It was a perfect Mother's Day afternoon!!

Happy Mother's Day to all!!!

Emilee Sings!!!

Emilee has been singing to us for YEARS, ever since she was tiny.  Joshua used to say she just might grow up and be the next Brittney Spears (not exactly hoping for that lol, but we'd sure be proud to see her put her singing talents to work somewhere!).  Emilee is in her school choir here in Idaho and I am finally getting around to uploading some of the video I have of her performances.  It takes a looooong time to get these uploaded, so I unfortunately lag way behind on getting these on my blog, but here they are...better late than never!  And HUGE disclaimer...listen to these more than you watch because my camera stinks and my hand isn't steady so they are super shaky at times...SORRY!

(Emilee is always top row, far right)



First is one from October...



These are from her two Christmas shows. One was formal (thus the robes) and the other was for fun for a school assembly. I know two of these are repeats, but I wanted to make sure that you got to see Emilee and that I got both parts of the Elvis solo up.





And this last set are from a district wide performance in March.  The first is their formal performance and the second is a critique by seasoned choir teacher.  I love how she got them moving around a bit and having fun.  Emilee's choir teacher in Oklahoma used to have the kids doing that and it was super entertaining to watch!

Monkeys at the park

The monkeys indulged me when we were at the park a couple of weeks ago and let me snap some fun pictures. I LOVE park montages like this, that all sort of match, and since everyone had on blue and the playground equipment was blue, it came out looking wonderful!

And since Emilee's friend, Amy, was also hanging out with us for the day, we had someone to take a snap a rare "Karen in the picture" photo.

My absolute favorite of the day!!!

And a few with Amy. She's one of our dearest friends we are going to miss when we move!!

Miscellaneous Carter

(This post is a lost and found one. It should have published back in November but apparently Blogger ate it...so here it is now, better late than never.)

Carter is VERY obsessed with gardening, and watering plants, and taking care of anything green. When we dug up our flower beds this fall to plant bulbs for the spring we pulled out some small paintbrush flowers that never really thrived and threw them in the trash pile. Horrified, Carter pulled them out of the trash and found some extra dirt and replanted them. Then every day he watered them and talked to them and moved them around so they were in the best sunny spot. He cracked us up with the attention he paid to them. This is the end result after he carefully cared for these decrepit plants. He even found some moss growing around the park area and transplanted it to his pots to make them look prettier.

And this picture is for Carter's Grandma Cathy. Carter is happily playing cars on the living room floor...with Daddy's truck stop collection from his childhood (bet this looks like Joshua did when he was little) and then since he needed extra room to play, Carter added the car rug that Grandma Cathy sewed years ago for Trevor. Pure boy fun!!!
Carter has all of a sudden blossomed with his fine motor skills and the other day he spent A LOT of time and drew this very busy picture. Here's his description, clockwise from noon.

Carter's name, Dad's office window in blue and Dad standing in his office window, flowers growing along the bottom in black, Carter and Karen standing in the bottom middle in black with Bunny in the middle, it's Bunny's birthday (thus the balloons attached to the top of her), Reese is in red, the fireplace is in blue, water balloons for the party are hanging from the black line, and the chimney is in black in the middle with lots of smoke coming out the smokestack.
It's that time of year...the leaves are falling and that means Moms and Dads rake them up so little monkeys can jump in the piles. Happy Fall Y'all!!!

Trevor does Track

Trev is in the middle of his first Track season. He loved Cross Country so much in the fall that he decided to give Track a go. He is enjoying this too, but boy it's different managing several running and field events as opposed to just running one cross country event and being done.

Here's Trevor giving discus a try. He's doing pretty well with it, considering it's his first time ever throwing, and he's improved his distance at each track meet!



(Imagine a cool disc-flying-through-the-air pic here...my camera stinks and didn't catch a clear one.)

Trevor also tried the 400m run last week and placed third!


(And the final picture is what happens when you have an awesome camera...thank you to the awesome dad standing next to me who snapped!)

Here's the coolest picture ever, of Trevor flying through the air on a fantastic long jump!!!

Texas surprise!

One of the awesome perks of moving back to Texas is we will now be a quick three hour drive from our dearest friends, Brett & Sanda, and their boys, Mason & Ethan. When we went out to TX on our house hunting trip I joked with Joshua that I wanted to take one day off from house hunting and drive up to see them...but I was firmly told that I was on a mission to find a house and visiting would have to wait for June. So we house hunted and found one...and then on the last day of our trip Joshua pulled off a huge surprise for me. I thought we were going to grab some quick lunch and relax at the hotel room for the rest of the day before flying out early the next morning. But when we walked into Taco Bell guess who was sitting there waiting for us?! I almost fell over dead from sheer shock at seeing them! My amazing husband had secretly called them and arranged for them to come up down!! Once I recovered from the unimaginable shock at seeing them when I didn't expect to, we had a wonderful afternoon, hanging out and visiting!

We took the boys to an indoor bouncehouse and playland to wear off some of the long car ride wiggles.

Thank you to Brett and Sanda for making the trip and to Joshua for setting it up!!

And today just happens to be the boys' third birthday so here's a special shout-out to them!!
HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY Birthday
Mason & Ethan!!!